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spine, and licked the sharp blades of her shoulders. One hand snaked between her legs, stroking, and with two fingers he parted her labia, and then he began to kill her. Or so she thought, he was stabbing at her, forcing a blunt club into her vagina. With each thrust, she cried out and clenched her muscles, slowly realizing that this weapon was a part of him. He called to her from far above, singing her name, then began grunting in rhythm. S’ee craned her neck but she could only make out his shadowy bulk in the pitch. He pressed against her head, and she thought she felt his mouth draw wide and full of sharp teeth. No longer able to hold up her own weight under his, S’ee folded her arms and crumpled facedown to the ground, and he covered her with his body, warm as a thick blanket against her back. With a shudder and a growling roar, he came inside her, a liquid heat that filled the void, as viscous as menses. In her shock, she felt nothing more than the pressure to pee and lifted herself at once so that he would move his dead weight off her. He kissed her again between the shoulders and withdrew.
    Scrambling away to a respectable distance, she squatted on the bare earth for a long time. When her muscles finally relaxed, she felt a burning sensation and caught the foulsweet smell of him streaming in her own water. The darkness pushed against her skin, chilling her. She felt her way back, desperate to find the man.
    “Where are you?” she whispered.
    A huff of air escaped his mouth as if he was snorting in his sleep. She followed the strange sound, her hands searching the darkness till she brushed against his hair. Thinking she had accidentally bumped his head, she mumbled an apology and when she touched what she thought was his chest or shoulder, he seemed extremely hairy, as if he had donned a fur coat.
    He drew her into his arms, and she curled her back against bare skin. The puzzle over the difference between the hirsute and smooth mankept her awake well into the night. Toward dawn, he woke, aroused. Knowing what was to happen, S’ee could relax the second time and was almost enjoying herself when he climaxed and quickly rolled off her back. They spooned together in the gathering light, and she began to think of the beautiful man as hers.
    Over the next two days, they traveled deeper into the forest as it rose toward far-off mountains. Each hour, the climb became more difficult, the spruce and cedar taller and thick with crepey moss, the air dense with moisture. She had never seen the inside of the rain forest or heard the riot of so many songbirds when the sun drilled a hole through the canopy. Rustling in the underbrush or the fleeting shift of shadows worried her to his side, and when a creek crossed their trail or a fallen cedar blocked the passage, he took her hand in his and led her safely. They passed the time by telling each other stories, and when she recounted the legend of her father, Yeikoo.shk’, and the death by salmon, he hung his head.
    “Sister salmon,” he said, “was upset. Take the eggs and leave the fish is not only wasteful but shows a lack of respect. What kind of man was this?”
    “A proud man. A foolish man.”
    “And who do you favor, little doll, your mother or your father?”
    She giggled as if he were merely teasing her. His ways seemed less alien the more time she spent in his company, and they were only apart before the evening meal when he left her alone to make a fire while he scared up some dinner. Once each day, he made his toilet in the privacy of the deep woods, and each time that feral smell returned with him, as powerful an odor as that she had tried to wash away at the stream with her sister. How long ago it seemed to her. S’ee could not abide the man’s scent when he first came back to her, could not imagine how so sweet a man could smell so awful.
    But at night she forgot about those momentary distractions. Aftertheir first sexual encounters, it was she who initiated